Q) What is Research?
A) Research is to Lost Eden as AXP is to Alien Invasion as Shadowknowledge is to Shadowlands as XP is to Anarchy Online Classic. In other words, Research is the new way of getting experience to get new skills and actions.

Q) What is Personal Research?
A) Personal Research is experience that is used to improve your character and your character alone. As you add more XP/SK to it, you enable new levels in various Lines of Research. These may improve your abilities, skills, or give you new actions. You only add XP/SK to 1 Research Line at a time, but you can switch to a new line any time you want.

Q) What is Global Research?
A) Global Research is experience that you donate to the common good (in the case of AP, to the Clans). Each faction (Clan, Omni, Neutral) have a separate pool of Global Research. Just like Personal Research Lines, you can only add to 1 line at a time. The Global Research Lines allow each side to work towards using Mechs and Turrets, and once available, to improve them.

Q) Can I "unlearn" a Research Line?
A) No, unlike Perks, you don't retrain / reset Research. You just start learning a new line.

Q) How much XP/SK can I put into Research?
A) You can put 100% of your XP/SK into Research. This is GREAT news for Twinks ... no more accidental levelling while still contributing to Global Research.

Q) So how much XP/SK SHOULD I put into Research?
A) If you are 220, then you should put 100% into either Personal, Global or split it into both. You don't get any benefit from wasting XP by not putting it all into one of these types. This means all that camping you do as a 220 can now be of benefit instead of wasted. The same answer goes if you are a twink that is done levelling. If you are actively levelling, its up to you. Is it more important to you to get new Research Lines learned? Put more into Research. If you want to level fast, put nothing into Research. But always contributing a small percentage to Global is a boon to your faction and will barely be noticed. One guideline I would recommend: add up all your +XP % items including side XP and put at least 1/2 of that into Global. Its not hard to level in AO.

* NOTE: Obviously, once you have all 7 Research Lines trained fully to Level 10, you should turn off Personal Research and put it all into Global (unless you're still levelling).

Q) Is there a maximum amount of XP/SK for Personal Research per kill?
A) Yes, there is a cap on the amount of Personal Research you can do per kill. It seems to me (more concrete numbers needed here) that it is capped at 5% of the XP/SK needed for that Research Level. For instance, Level 1 of any Research Line is capped at 2500XP or 2SK per kill. If you put more than that into the Research, it is wasted. But the cap rises quickly. The cap for Research Line Level 2 is almost 10 times that of Level 1. And so on.

Q) Is there a maximum amount of XP/SK for Global Research per kill?
A) There doesn't seem to be. You can put everything into Global, or you can put just enough into Personal to cap it and the rest into Global. If there is a cap, it is very high.

Q) Why does Global Research go so slowly?
A) There are 3 reasons for this. First, Global Research requires MUCH more to complete than Personal as it is a pooling of EVERYONE in your faction, not just 1 person. Second, as people get higher into the Personal Research Line levels, they need more and more XP/SK per kill to cap their contributions (eventually getting to a point where they can't cap it with a normal kill) and so they put less and less into Global while they are completing Personal Research. Third, the slider for Global Research only updates twice per day, so you are not seeing Real Time numbers there.

Q) How do the sliders work?
A) You have 2 sliders in your Research window (accessible via shift+o or the left menu bar). If you slide the "Personal" slider to 100%, all your XP/SK will go to Personal Research. If you slide the Global to 100%, it all goes to Global. You can't put 100% into both, the sliders will balance themselves. There is no "Levelling" slider ... whatever percentage you DON'T put into Personal or Global combined will go into helping you level (or be wasted if you are 220).

* Example: Slide Personal to 100 ... Slide Global to 50 (see Personal adjust itself to 50 as well, combined total being 100) ... that will give you no XP/SK towards leveling
* Example: Slide Personal to 10 ... Slide Global to 10 ... this will give you 80% towards levelling.
* Example: Slide Personal to 80 ... Slide Global to 20 ... this is what many people are recommending to a 220 or Twink if they don't want to follow the steps in the next item (micromanaging Research).

Q) Doesn't this make me micromanage my Research?
A) Yes. If you want to completely maximize the amount of Personal Research you are getting without wasting any by not putting it in Global Research, you need to keep your Personal Research % as low as you can while still capping it.

Q) Wasn't this all a tad silly?
A) Yes. Funcom could have -easily- made it so that you never wasted XP/SK while doing Research by making it such that IF you capped your Personal Research, the rest was automatically dumped into either levelling or Global Research, depending on your Global slider. They didn't. So you can either micromanage the settings (especially on low Research Line Levels which have low XP/SK caps) or you can just deal with "losing" some level of XP/SK that otherwise would have gone into Global or levelling.

Q) Is there a maximum amount of Personal Research Levels I can train?
A) Yes. First, there are only 7 Research Lines, with 10 levels per Research Line. So a 220 can train 70 total Research Line Levels. Second, there is -probably- a limit on how many Research Line Levels you can train based on your character level (ie, L1, L50, L220, etc). However I don't have information on what these limits are. Even if there isn't one, there will be practical limits on it as you will need exponentially more XP/SK to go up in the higher levels of Personal Research.

Q) What Personal Research Lines are best to train?
A) That's beyond the scope of this document. Search the forums for a listing of the Personal Research Lines for your profession so you can examine them for yourselves.

Q) What Global Research Lines are best to train?
A) Again, that is a matter of opinion. This is a pool that ALL people from your faction must work together on. Therefore they will go slowly. You might consider seeing if a large portion of your Faction is looking towards a specific goal (and then consider if you agree with that goal, just remember that if everyone contributes randomly, they will all go up, but much slower).

yeah, my impression of how the sliders work is changing. I'm pretty sure the stuff above isn't quite right. Haven't nailed it down yet though, and would welcome someone writing up a more correct version.

I was getting the same as lk. its almsot as if it takes the amount set by the personal slider then splits it acording to both sliders settings. i.e. 50 personal / 50 global and you get 100,000 from a kill. You end up getting 25000 personal, 25000 global and 50,000 into your xp bar.

I was getting the same as lk. its almsot as if it takes the amount set by the personal slider then splits it acording to both sliders settings. i.e. 50 personal / 50 global and you get 100,000 from a kill. You end up getting 25000 personal, 25000 global and 50,000 into your xp bar.

That would be a better system if there wasnt a max for the added value.

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